


slow collisions (asteroids)

by copperwings



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everybody Lives, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon, season 8 was a shitshow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 09:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17041295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperwings/pseuds/copperwings
Summary: It’s not that hehatesweddings or wedding attire. It’s just that they remind him of a certain other wedding that happened four years, two months and thirteen days ago, counting by old Earth years.Not that he’s kept count.-or; the fic in which Keith comes back years later for Hunk and Romelle's wedding and everything sorts itself out.





	slow collisions (asteroids)

**Author's Note:**

> Season 8 was bullshit. I'm coping by making everything right goddammit.

Keith grimaces at his reflection and straightens his lopsided bowtie. Weddings are not his forte, especially when it comes to the dress code.

As soon as he lets go, the bowtie springs back to its original position, and he lets out an annoyed sigh. “Fuck it.” He slams the metal locker shut and steps out of the tiny bathroom.

His short-range shuttle is parked near the venue, and he soon joins a long line of other guests heading toward the same destination. When he gets to the venue, it’s packed with people. Judging by the turnout, years of being a diplomat and an amazing chef have certainly earned Hunk a lot of friends. Keith lets his eyes wander over the crowd, but he doesn’t see any familiar faces. It’s a disappointment and a relief.

The air is suffocating, and the damned bowtie is trying to strangle him. As he slides down to a seat near the back he tries to straighten the bowtie again, but the stubborn piece of clothing refuses to cooperate. He considers ripping it off and tossing it in the nearby flower vase. Hunk most likely wouldn’t care if he turned up at the wedding wearing jeans and a leather jacket, but at least this way he gets to blend into the crowd.

It’s not that he _hates_ weddings or wedding attire. It’s just that they remind him of a certain other wedding that happened four years, two months and thirteen days ago, counting by old Earth years.

Not that he’s kept count.

He spots a few familiar faces from his days on the Atlas, but aside from a nod across the room they don’t exchange greetings and no one makes a move to come sit with him. What they had in common was the battle, and now that the battle is over it’s no use trying to pretend like they want to hang out together.

It almost feels like being back in school, where no one wanted to hang out with him. In a way it also feels like the early days among the Galra after the war. Some of them still refuse to see him as anything other than a half-breed, and they don’t bother to hide their sideways glances. He’s had years of practice ignoring such glances, so they don’t bother him anymore.

He looks down at the crisp, ironed line on his pants and suppresses a grim smile. Truth be told, the only time he’s ever felt a part of anything was back in the days of Voltron. Sure, they were a ragtag team thrown together by circumstance, but at least they had each other. They were the defenders of the universe. It’s still so strange to think that they were the force that brought the universe back from the brink of destruction.

Keith startles when someone sits beside him, and then he finds himself engulfed in a sideways hug that makes his ribs crack and his vertebrae pop.

Pidge is still short in stature but she packs a lot of strength in those scrawny-looking arms.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Pidge says when she finally lets him go. “Nice tux.”

“Thanks,” Keith mutters. “You too.”

Pidge has always shown her true colors for the world to see, so naturally the crisp suit she’s wearing is deep forest green. Keith smiles for the first time since landing. Pidge is ever the Green Paladin.

Pidge reaches out to straighten the crooked bowtie, but gives up after a few tries. Keith grins at her frustration. “It’s very stubborn.”

“Kind of like you,” Pidge jabs, the words softened by the fondness of her tone.

Keith snorts. “Not one minute in and you’re already mocking me. It’s like coming home.” Saying those last four words awakens an old ache somewhere deep in his stomach.

Pidge winks. “Glad you like.”

“So. Is Lance coming?”

Pidge shakes her head. “I haven’t really… heard of him in a long time. And I figured he wouldn’t want—it’s a wedding, and, you know.” She makes a vague gesture with her hand.

Keith understands what she means. He knows Lance doesn’t like weddings, and it’s easy to figure out why. Weddings will forever remind Lance of what he lost.

Keith’s heart makes a strange twisting motion in his chest, and it’s not only because of the sudden, stinging reminder of Allura. He should have never asked about Lance; it’s dangerous territory, because now they’re talking about things and people they both know, so he knows it’s only a matter of time before Pidge mentions—

“Shiro’s coming, though.”

And there it is.

“Oh. Okay.” It’s like all air is punched out of his lungs by the force of Pidge’s words.

Keith looks down to his lap and plays idly with the wrist comm peeking out of his sleeve. He pokes the screen to clear the notifications and then hides the comm in his sleeve again, not knowing what to say.

The nervous spark running up and down his spine multiplies its efforts as more people pour in through the doors. Keith wants to look away, but he can’t. He’s always been good at looking death in the eye, might as well do so once more. Because that’s what seeing Shiro is bound to feel like: death, only amplified, because death is more merciful. Death has an ending, a point when the suffering stops. Keith is not as lucky. His ailment is not the kind that ends and goes away, even if he goes to the farthest reaches of the universe to escape it.

Then Shiro walks through the door, and Keith welcomes death. He’s aware of Pidge talking, but her words are nonsense in his ears. He can only hear his own blood, coursing through his veins with such force that its wailing song covers everything else beneath it.

Shiro is dressed in a black suit and he looks just as breathtaking as he did all those years ago when Keith was a stupid teenager with a stupid crush. He’s neither stupid nor a teenager anymore. He wishes he could say that the stupid crush is a thing of the past as well, but alas, no such luck.

Keith blinks when he realizes the picture is incomplete. His eyes flit from Shiro to the doorway and over the crowd.

Curtis is not here. Not that it necessarily means anything, but his brain takes note of it anyway. Keith swallows and wills his eyes to look away, but it’s too late. Shiro spots them and waves. His prosthetic is different, smaller and with an actual elbow joint inside his sleeve. More suited for a time of peace, Keith guesses.

Shiro walks over and gets his turn in Pidge’s game of hug-attacks. Keith swallows and looks at Shiro’s arms wrapped around Pidge. He knows what being wrapped in Shiro’s arms is like. How could he forget? Keith remains in his seat until Pidge lets go and Shiro steps closer. Keith gets to his feet and shakes Shiro’s hand, mutters a greeting. It’s so awkward that they’re not hugging anymore like they used to.

Pidge looks just as awkward as Keith feels when he lets his hand drop and sits back down, turning his eyes toward the front of the room where the ceremony is about to begin. At this point it’s a saving grace, because at least he’s not expected to make small talk while the wedding ceremony is ongoing.

Shiro chooses a seat next to Pidge and they begin whispering to each other while Keith keeps his eyes trained on the massive bouquet of flowers on the table at the front.

A side door opens, and Hunk comes out, arm linked with Romelle’s as they walk toward the table.

They’re both dressed in decorative clothes, Hunk’s traditional Samoan and Romelle’s Altean clashing in a way that’s awful to the eye but somehow very sweet. Hunk looks the same as he did the last time Keith saw him, but that wasn’t too long ago. Hunk is the only one he’s stayed in contact with, but that’s only because Hunk keeps calling him every two weeks like a clockwork. It’s difficult to shake a friend who refuses to let go.

Keith smiles to himself. Hunk’s heart has always been too big for his physical form. There’s so much love in him that it extends across the universe. Keith can pretend he doesn’t want it, but he will admit to himself that Hunk’s calls have at times been his tether, keeping him grounded in reality when the universe has threatened to collapse around him. Working with the Blades, bringing hope and supplies across star systems has also been a good distraction, but there is no place in the universe that’s far enough for him to go and forget.

Keith is acutely aware of Shiro’s presence, two seats to the right with only Pidge as a barrier between them. Keith watches Hunk and Romelle give their vows and perform some kind of a ritual with a cup and a candle, but even with the speakers amplifying their words for the crowd he can’t make any sense of them. It’s like the only sound that exists in the universe is the rush of his own blood, ringing through his ears as his heart rate never drops below a hundred. He knows this because his wrist comm helpfully notifies him that his heart rate is elevated. Keith sighs and dismisses the notification.

Once the ceremony is over, the guests are instructed to move into the adjacent botanical garden where the wedding feast will be waiting.

They raise a toast to Hunk and Romelle’s marriage, get some food, and after that it’s time for the part that Keith hates about every event in the known universe: mingling. He’s always been bad at small talk and he has no patience or interest in learning it either.

As it turns out, a botanical garden is an amazing venue to host a wedding, because it gives Keith ample possibilities to hide or pretend he’s extremely invested in botany. Whenever someone approaches him with any kind of intent, he leans in to read the description of the nearest flower like he’s always wanted to know this plant’s name and genus. The winding pathways and greenery also offer great hiding spots, allowing him to lurk behind shrubbery with his half-empty glass of sparkling wine.

He approaches Hunk and Romelle at their table when the majority of the guests have wandered over to the dessert buffet.

“Hey,” Keith says, lowering his glass on the table. “Congrats to both of you.”

“Keith, man, it’s so good to see you in real life and not just through a screen. So glad you could come,” Hunk says, getting up and circling around the table to hug Keith. Hugging Hunk is familiar and safe; another thing that feels like coming home. Romelle’s hug is no less timid, so she’s clearly been taking lessons from Hunk on hugs as well as baking.

“Hey,” a voice calls from behind, and Keith deep-freezes to the core. He’d know that voice anywhere in the universe, and he blames Hunk and Romelle’s excellent hugging skills for allowing him to let his guard down like this.

“Congrats to both of you,” Shiro says, settling beside Keith within a distance that’s friendly but not overbearing. He raises a glass. “A toast, to all the happy days to come,” he continues, and Keith scrambles to grab his glass from the edge of the table. “May there be many.”

They clink their glasses together, and Keith almost manages to avoid looking Shiro in the eye as their sparkling wines meet in the middle. Almost.

Same as Shiro’s voice, his eyes are familiar, albeit hidden behind the glasses he wears these days. The color is steely gray that in a certain lighting looks black, but when the sun hits his eyes just right they show cool specks of silver in the sea of gray. Keith has looked into them so many times before, he could recite it all by heart.

Shiro’s eyes are unreadable. “How are things with the Blades?”

“Good,” Keith breathes out. “They’re… good. We’ve been working on a food aid project on a planet near Daibazaal.”

Pidge chooses this moment to make an appearance, and while Hunk and Romelle are busy talking to her, Keith finds himself walking away. With Shiro.

Shiro has always been good at leading people without making it look like he’s leading. Keith realizes this once more as Shiro gracefully leads him down a gravel pathway.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Keith exhales and doesn’t rattle out the number of days from memory. “Yeah.” He twirls his glass by the stem and looks at the golden liquid sloshing in the glass. It’s been half-empty so long that the bubbles are nearly depleted, but the stale liquid offers something to concentrate on.

“I meant to call…” Shiro’s voice fades away.

“We’ve both been busy,” Keith says. “It happens.” He hates the way his voice cracks at the end, breaking the illusion of casualness the words aimed for.

Shiro hums under his breath, and they fall into silence.

They used to stay up and talk for hours, about life, death, the universe. Anything and everything. Shiro walked around the Castle of Lions in the dead of the night because he couldn’t sleep, and Keith walked with him. Endless corridors, rooms and halls, filled with their words and sometimes laughter.

Now their words could barely fill a matchbox, let alone a botanical garden.

As they stroll down the path, Keith squints at a sign stuck on the soft ground near a plant out of habit. “This one’s called a Lion’s Wing,” he says, snorting softly. The name is like a memorial of the past, when they stuck their bayards into the slots to engage the hidden powers within their lions.

Shiro chuckles. “Oh really?” he leans in to inspect the sign. “That’s funny.”

Shiro’s side profile is another thing on the list of familiar things. The scar on the bridge of his nose has faded over time, but aside from that he looks the same. Perhaps a bit older, more tired, but that could just be the fluorescent lighting in the garden.

Keith swallows and looks down to where Shiro’s glass is hanging from his fingers by the rim. The sight takes a second to register, but when it does, Keith’s heart hops and skips in different directions like it doesn’t know what to think of this. Then it begins a thunderous race that makes his wrist comm buzz with a notification, undoubtedly to let him know his heart rate is elevated.

Shiro’s left hand is bare.

No Curtis, no ring.

The question is on his tongue, but he can’t utter the words. Instead he stares at Shiro’s fingers curled around the rim of the glass, examining them from every angle until he’s sure of what he sees.

Shiro notices the look. Keith knows this because Shiro coughs and transfers his glass to his metal hand, pushing his left hand into the pocket of his dress pants.

“So. How long are you around?” Shiro asks casually. “We should catch up after the party if you have the time.”

“I, uh, sure,” Keith says. “I can take an extra day.” Kolivan will absolutely let him take all the days he wants, because Kolivan is the one who’s been pushing him to take some vacation time. Keith just doesn’t know what to do with free time, so he has mostly ignored Kolivan’s requests.

As the evening advances, breathing around Shiro becomes easier, and with breathing come words. Not enough words to fill a hallway or a room, but enough to upgrade from a matchbox to a shoe box, perhaps.

Near midnight the guests bid their farewells to Hunk and Romelle who are leaving on a hovercraft to spend their honeymoon on Honey Moon. It’s the third moon of Klyrax, three star systems over from their own. Keith suspects Hunk only had to hear the name of the moon to decide that’s exactly where he wants to vacation with his new wife. He grins at the retreating couple and silently wishes them all the best in the universe.

Shiro is somewhere nearby, and his presence is like a homing beacon that Keith’s scanner lost track of for years, but now he’s back on his trajectory.

Keith leaves soon after the happy couple, and this time he hugs Shiro as they depart. It’s still awkward, but infinitely better than the handshake hours prior.

“Wait,” Shiro calls when Keith walks to his shuttle. “How do I find you?”

Keith knows he means something like his screen name in the system, and he intends to rattle out the string of letters and numbers that allow people to find him over the intergalactic network.

Instead, what comes out is, “Meet me at sunset tomorrow. You know the place.”

 

-

 

Keith doesn’t know what he was thinking, telling Shiro to come to the place where they used to go after hoverbike racing. He curses out loud the entire way out of Earth’s atmosphere and to his ship that’s waiting docked at the station orbiting the planet.

He ends up in the station’s dingy bar knocking down four shots of vodka before going back to his ship and crashing for the night. The vodka will give him a headache in the morning but at least it will help him in his attempt to sleep, lest he end up wandering around the space station like a lost soul for the next twenty-odd hours.

He spends the following morning agonizing over the coming meeting like it’s his life on the line. Or well, technically he spends several mornings, because the station’s orbit allows him to witness a dozen sunrises before the Earth completes another rotation around its axis. He spends the first sunrise holding his head and staring into the mirror in his ship’s bathroom, but by the time the next sunrise rolls around he’s ready for breakfast.

Food does little to chase away the hollow sensation in his stomach.

He misses the easy closeness they used to share with Shiro. It all changed at some point. It wasn’t a sudden change, it didn’t happen overnight. It was more like two asteroids colliding at an extremely slow speed in the vacuum of space. Asteroids drift closer and closer and bump gently into each other, then float away from the force of the collision until they’re out of each other’s reach. That’s what it felt like, only he didn’t see it before it was too late. The collision happened and they started to drift apart, and by the time Keith understood the situation, Shiro had already moved too far away for him to fix the situation.

He remembers when Shiro introduced Curtis as his boyfriend for the first time, and the ache that left in his stomach. Curtis was a good guy, Keith couldn’t argue with that—but despite thinking about it more than was probably healthy, he couldn’t understand what it was about Curtis that drew Shiro in. Curtis was nice, yeah, but before he became Shiro’s boyfriend, Keith didn’t even register his existence beyond being vaguely aware that he worked on the bridge of the Atlas. He was very much one of those people who blended into their surroundings, and Keith couldn’t see what Shiro saw in him.

Maybe he was an opposite of everything Shiro had been through in the past. They say that opposites attract, but Keith doesn’t see it that way. _Compatible_ people attract each other, whether they are each other’s polar opposites or not.

Maybe he’s biased, but it didn’t seem like Shiro and Curtis fell under the category of _compatible_.

Well, judging by Curtis’ absence and the lack of a ring on Shiro’s finger, perhaps it’s not just Keith’s bias making that assumption.

He forces the remainders of his mild hangover away with a workout session at the station’s gym, running until he tastes blood and listening to music as loudly as his ears can take it. However, even when he’s doing his damnedest to occupy his mind, he’s constantly aware of his wrist comm’s timer ticking down until it’s sunset time in the coordinates ne needs to navigate to.

 

-

 

It’s almost an hour until sunset when Keith lands his shuttle in a remote corner of the desert. The shapes of the land have changed over the years, but it’s still familiar enough for him to navigate to the cliff with relative ease.

His wrist comm buzzes, letting him know its scanner detects a small vessel and a singular lifeform ahead.

Shiro is already here.

Keith walks around the bend of the hill, and the sight transports him back to the past. A lone figure leans against the side of a hovercraft, silhouetted against the setting sun. If it wasn’t for Shiro’s light hair and the sleeker, newer model of his hovercraft, Keith would think he’s stepped through a portal and ended up in the days before the Kerberos mission.

Keith pokes the screen on his wrist to silence the buzz of his comm. The device is all too eager to keep him up to date of his bodily functions, and he doesn’t need a notification to know that his heart rate just skyrocketed through the roof.

Shiro knows he’s there—he must know, because Keith is purposefully loud with his steps—but he doesn’t turn around. He’s staring at the horizon where the sun is creeping toward the faraway hills, painting the sky in shades of pink and orange. The golden light makes Shiro look younger, despite the glasses perched up on his nose.

“Hey,” Keith says and settles against the side of the hovercraft, not too close but close enough so he could reach out and touch Shiro’s shoulder.

Shiro smiles and turns to look at him. “Hey.” He looks good in his jeans and leather jacket combo, and as always, Keith feels like he’s somehow lesser, smaller, different. He didn’t bring casual hangout clothes with him, so his options were limited to his tux and the upgraded Blade suit. It looks a lot like his previous suit, but it’s not as heavily armored. It doesn’t quite feel like something he should wear for a casual hangout, though. Sometimes he misses the red jacket he used to wear all the time.

“Kosmo’s not with you?” Shiro asks after a moment of silence.

“No, he’s with my mom and Kolivan. I figured he might steal attention from Hunk and Romelle if he started doing his usual tricks. I mean it might be kind of attention-grabbing if a horse-sized wolf started teleporting around the wedding buffet in search of meatballs.”

Shiro laughs, and it’s a good sound. Solid sound. Keith has missed that sound.

“Yeah, I guess that could count as a distraction,” Shiro admits. “How’s your mom?”

“She’s good,” Keith says, curving his lips in something resembling a smile. “I actually have a little sister now.”

Shiro’s mouth forms a surprised o-shape and he blinks. “Oh, _right_. Krolia and Kolivan.”

“Yeah.” Keith snorts, amused. “Took them awhile to _admit_ anything was going on. It was really funny, because they were sneaking around, thinking I didn’t notice. I almost wanted to record it for future generations. In a few years Yoruna might find it hilarious.”

“Yoruna? Oh, your sister.”

“Yeah, she’s…” Keith pauses, tries to translate the age into Earth years. “Counting by Earth years she’ll be four in a few months.”

“Oh, right, I remember now! How could I forget? Your mom was pregnant when—” Shiro’s voice cuts off abruptly.

Keith gives him a sharp glance. He knows Shiro is referring to the wedding, but it seems to be a subject he doesn’t want to discuss just yet.

“So, you got rid of the Altean arm, then.” Keith changes the subject, nodding at the slim metal prosthetic poking out of Shiro’s sleeve. He thinks Shiro looks grateful about the change of topic.

Shiro smiles sadly. “Yeah, I uh. I gave the power crystal to Lance a couple of years ago.” He looks down at the metal hand and strokes the surface with his left hand. Keith doesn’t want to stare at the fourth finger, but he notices it’s still bare, not even a pale mark on the skin showing the place of a ring.

“Oh.” Keith looks up, trying to settle more comfortably against the side of the hovercraft. “That’s nice.”

Shiro lets out a soft snort. “Yeah. I mean, it’s not like I needed the arm anymore, you know? It was made for battle, and the battle was over. So I figured, the crystal spent ten thousand years in suspended animation with Allura—it was kind of like a small part of her. I wanted him to have it.”

Keith swallows and looks up at the sky. He wonders if Allura is out there somewhere, watching over them from a field of quintessence.

“Have you been in contact with Lance lately?” he asks, carefully steering away from the questions he really wants to ask.

Shiro sighs. “Not in recent years. I think I last saw him over a year ago, he was working with Slav at the time to improve the watering systems for the fields in the north.”

“Slav and Lance? Working together?” Keith chuckles out a laugh. “I wonder what the calculated probability of anyone seeing _that_ happening was.”

“Probably in the single digits.” Shiro laughs again, and the sound echoes and flutters inside Keith. He stores it somewhere deep inside him, to the place where he keeps the important memories.

He needs those memories when he’s going to head back to the Daibazaal system.

“So. Are we not going to talk about things?” Keith finally asks, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down at where his boots are covered in specks of sand. This is a conversation that’s years overdue at this point. “Like, _real_ things. The way we used to.”

Beside him, Shiro flinches visibly. Keith sees the jerk of movement from the corner of his eye even though he’s not looking at Shiro.

Keith’s comm informs him that his blood pressure is on the rise, and he dismisses the notification with a huff. Like he doesn’t know. The familiar thunderous noise of his own blood rushing in his ears returns, forming the background music to the conversation neither of them really wants to have. But it’s a necessary conversation, if they are to become friends again.

Keith grimaces inwardly at the word. _Friends_. However, he’d rather have Shiro in his life as a friend, even if it’s going to feel like half-capacity, than not have Shiro in his life at all. He’s tried not having Shiro in his life for over four years. It’s not working very well for him.

“Curtis and I got divorced,” Shiro says, confirming what Keith already suspected.

The sun continues its crawl toward the horizon, adding deep violet hues to the mix of pinks and oranges. The coldness of desert nights is already creeping in, the cool breeze touching the back of Keith’s neck, fluttering his hair about. Unlike at the wedding, his hair is down today because he doesn’t usually bother with a ponytail.

“I’m sorry,” Keith says after a short pause. That’s what you’re supposed to say when people get divorced, right? _Sorry it didn’t work out. Pat-pat. There, there, you will find love again._ It’s more hollow small talk he’s never been good at, so he leaves it at _sorry_. At least that’s honest, because when it comes down to it, all he really wants is Shiro to be happy. Hence, he is sorry Shiro couldn’t find happiness with the man he chose.

It does sting a bit, though. That Shiro chose someone else, after all they’d been through.

Shiro laughs, and this time the sound is empty, unamused. “I’m not.”

Keith’s eyes snap up and focus on Shiro’s side profile. The sunset casts a warm glow on his skin, and his hair mirrors the golden tones of the sky.

Shiro takes his glasses off and pinches the bridge of his nose. He folds the glasses and hangs them on his breast pocket. They leave behind a red mark on his nose, above the pale scar.

Keith’s hand flies to touch the narrow strip of scar tissue on his own face, faded over time so it’s barely visible anymore. He smiles ruefully. They’re both scarred by the war, in several different ways.

“With Curtis, it was _easy_ , you know?” Shiro says in a tone that indicates he’s about to launch into a long, difficult monologue. “Being with him was easy. Simple. Because even though he was there for some of the battles, he never witnessed—everything else we went through.”

Keith nods. It makes sense; they went through a lot of stuff before making their way back to Earth.

“At the time, I think it was what I needed.” Shiro rubs his left hand over his eyes, sighing. “The kind of comfort I needed. Having someone around who _kind of_ knew what I’d been through, but at the same time didn’t know all of it. Not the way _you_ know, for example. You were there for almost everything.”

Keith nods again. He doesn’t want to say anything, afraid that he’ll break the spell and reduce their interactions back into matchbox-sized containment, full of pleasantries and empty words and nothing else.

“Then the dust settled, after everything was over, and I—I got myself a therapist.” Shiro inhales deep. “I know it’s not like a shameful thing to go to therapy, but it’s still weird to say it. But we went through _a lot_ of shit, it makes sense. Anyway. She worked with me for over two years, and while I pieced myself back together, Curtis and I fell further apart. Now that I look at it, I can see those two things were connected, but at the time it was like, what am I doing wrong? Why is it that when I start getting better, Curtis and I are getting worse?” He huffs. “So then I get out of therapy, two years into our marriage, and Curtis tells me it’s over, he wants a divorce. It’s like he’d been waiting for me to be in good standing to drop the news.”

Shiro smiles and shields his eyes from the last rays of the sun reaching over the line of hills in the horizon. “Like I said, I think he was what I needed at the time. Someone who kind of knew what happened, but didn’t know all of it. Not like you.”

Keith exhales, shaky and strained. “Not like me.”

Shiro turns to look at him, then, and the way he has to squint his eyes without his glasses is something Keith stores away in his heart of hearts, right next to all the times Shiro has laughed or smiled.

“When I came back from the dead, we were still in the middle of war. There was never time to stop and reflect, no time to think about anything but the next strategic move. And I kind of… pushed you away. Because at the time it was too much. You knew too much, you’d seen me go through too much.” Shiro’s eyes are soft. “You were too much. _We_ were too much.”

The Blades make their armor to mold to the wearer’s body, but right now Keith feels like his suit is malfunctioning, because it’s clearly trying to strangle him. His wrist comm buzzes with several notifications at once, and Keith is certain that one of them will tell him that his heart stopped functioning and another will reveal that his lungs failed.

Shiro continues talking, and somehow Keith is still able to listen even though he’s sure he should be declared dead by now.

“I wasn’t in a mental space where I could—where I could deal with it. So I just… _didn’t_. I don’t expect you to forgive me for pushing you away like that. It was selfish of me.”

Even through his haze of near-death, Keith wants to object. The thing is, Shiro is anything but selfish. He may have done selfish things in his life, but deep down he’s always putting the needs of others above his own.

“When I got my head back together, I realized it was—I was pushing you away because I couldn’t deal with having a person in my life who knew so intimately what I’d gone through. I was afraid you’d see me as unsalvageable, having seen too much of it all during the war.”

“I would never—” Keith is somehow able to form those three words, despite the fact that he’s clinically dead. “I would _never_ ,” he repeats, voice cracking.

Shiro blinks rapidly a few times and sighs. “I know. I should have seen it, but at the time I couldn’t. As many times as it takes, huh?”

Keith nods, slowly. “As many times as it takes.”

Guess that means Shiro has recovered the clone’s full memories, after a long time of everything being scrambled in his head. Which means he also remembers the fight—the heat of anger, Keith’s broken pleas, the words he uttered in a moment of desperation. Keith’s dead heart comes back to the realm of the living and starts racing, prompting yet another annoying buzz from his wrist comm. He really needs to turn off the vital signs monitor next time he’s talking to Shiro.

_Next time._

He hopes there will be a next time. Keith kicks at the sand and watches a cloud of dust forming at his feet. The sun vanishes behind the horizon, the warm light lingering for a moment before turning into cool shadows.

“Keith.” Shiro’s voice is like a magnet; it pulls his eyes up and to Shiro’s face. “I’m so sorry I let you go.” Shiro steps closer, maybe because he doesn’t see so well without his glasses, but the sudden closeness is the last nail in Keith’s proverbial coffin.

He closes the distance, and Shiro is right _there_ , hugging him close like so many times before. The leather jacket squeaks against the Blades suit, and Shiro is warm and solid, just like Keith remembers. Even though their height difference has diminished from what it used to be, Keith finds that his face still fits perfectly in the crook between Shiro’s neck and shoulder. Shiro’s left hand finds its way to the back of Keith’s neck, stroking his hair, and the gesture is so comforting in its simplicity that Keith’s vision blurs. He blinks, trying to get rid of the blurriness, but he only succeeds in dotting Shiro’s shoulder with warm droplets.

“I’m so sorry.” Shiro repeats the words as a whisper into his hair, and the warm fluttering breath only makes the tears flow with more intensity.

Keith clings onto Shiro, taking in the solid warmth and the soft touch of Shiro’s fingers combing through his hair.

“I made a promise, years ago,” Shiro says, sighing. “I promised I’d never give up on you. I’m sorry I failed that promise.”

Keith sniffs, reluctantly detaching one hand from where it’s clutching the back of Shiro’s jacket to wipe his nose on his sleeve. “You did it—for you,” he manages to sniffle in between sobs heaving his chest. “You needed to do it—for you. You deserve—everything. You deserve—the world.”

“I don’t deserve you.” Shiro’s voice trembles, and a warm splash falls on Keith’s ear, startling him. Another soon follows, wetting his hair with salt and sadness.

“I’m never letting go—again,” Keith swears, tightening his grip around Shiro. “Never.”

There are a lot of words left unspoken, a lot of things they still need to discuss, but right now Keith just wants to hold Shiro and feel alive again in a way he hasn’t felt in years.

His wrist comm buzzes. “Shut up,” Keith mutters to the device. “You’re ruining the moment.”

Shiro laughs, and Keith marvels being able to not only hear his laughter, but _feel_ it, right there against his heart.

They stand pressed against each other long after the last remaining glow of sunlight has retreated behind the horizon. Keith’s tears dry and make his face itchy, but he refuses to let go of Shiro. He lost Shiro once. He’s not going to lose him again.

Keith’s wrist comm beeps once, then again. He tries to ignore the continuous bombarding of messages from the app, but eventually he lets go of Shiro’s jacket to bring his wrist up behind Shiro’s back to check the messages.

It’s a new group chat. Aside from a work-related Blade group, Keith hasn’t had a group chat in his messages in years. There is one message from Lance, then several from Pidge, and even one from Hunk who is supposed to be ignoring messages because he’s on his honeymoon. Shiro’s name is in the recipients as well, and as Keith watches Coran joins the conversation. Then Matt. Then Slav, who brings with him a jumble of words declaring probabilities but for once, he’s not shouting doom and destruction.

No, he’s talking about life.

Shiro must feel the way he tenses, because he pulls back just a fraction of an inch. “What is it?”

“What. The. Fuck.” Keith allows Shiro to disentangle his arms from around him and step back. “Look at this.”

Shiro’s glasses are miraculously still intact even though Keith’s been squeezing against them for several minutes. He hastily pushes them on his nose and looks at the backlog of messages as Keith scrolls up to the beginning.

Lance’s first message, beginning the conversation, reads simply:

_we did it, we did it WE DID ITT SHE’S bACK holy shit guys VEN AQUÍ AHORA_

The following messages from Pidge and Coran mirror Keith’s own confusion, until Slav’s message clarifies the topic of the conversation. Well, kind of. Slav has never been good at explaining things in an easily-understandable way. There is something about a space-time continuum, stuff about quintessence and probabilities, then a mention of a crystal and an opened pathway.

_—we just used the crystal’s integration to her neural pathways to show her the way back, and there was a very slight probability of it working, and if gone wrong the results might have been catastrophic but my calculations proved correct for this reality. It must have been the purple vest I told Lance to wear every day for the two years we’ve been working on this and—_

A video clip pops up.

Keith presses play. It’s Lance, wearing a purple vest and hugging an exhausted-looking Allura to his chest. He’s crying and smiling like Keith has never seen before. His Altean markings are glowing, mirroring Allura’s. “You guys, you need to come here. It’s Allura, she’s here. We used the crystal and she found her way back.”

“Holy shit,” Keith breathes out. “The crystal. Allura’s crystal.”

The corners of Shiro’s eyes crinkle when he smiles. “Love finds a way.”

_Yes_ , Keith thinks when he looks at the face he wants to see every day for the rest of his life. _Love finds a way. It might not be a direct, easy route, but it will get there eventually._

Shiro’s hand seeks Keith’s and squeezes. “Should we go see Allura?”

“Heck yeah,” Keith agrees. “Leave the hovercraft, we’ll go faster with my shuttle.”

They make their way back to where Keith’s shuttle is parked, and Shiro’s hand never leaves his.

Their words, spoken and unspoken, follow them as they fly across the night sky together.

_I will never give up on you._

_As many times as it takes._

_I love you._

Like asteroids in the vacuum of space, they’re affected by outside forces. Sometimes they collide with foreign bodies on their journey through nothingness, and they're pushed even further apart because of it. At times, however, perhaps those outside forces push them back on the trajectory toward one another.

What matters is that in the end they come together and collide again; only this time Keith plans to cling on and not let the force of the collision to push them apart. 

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I’m sure everyone and their dog has already written a fix-it fic. I haven’t really read many other fix-its, so if this idea has been done to death, sorry (…well, _not_ sorry, actually. This was my way of processing and getting over the devastation that was s08, so it’s my self-indulgent coping mechanism and I refuse to apologize for that. :D)  
> -  
> Find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ofcopperwings), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/copperwings) or [tumblr](https://worldofcopperwings.tumblr.com/).   
> -  
> Thanks to my lovely beta [thoughtsappear](https://thoughtsappear.tumblr.com/).


End file.
